"Ken Blake" wrote in message
...
"forehead" - "for-head" or "FORRid" (the latter
is almost obsolete)

Obsolete or not, I say FORR-id. By the way, I might be wrong but I
think more people (at least in the US) say FAR-head rather than
FOR-head.

True - there is a difference with vowels. Likewise "caught" tends more
towards "cot" in some US accents.

I've got a dictionary which gives the pronunciations of words, with symbols
to represent certain sounds and giving specimen words (eg "o as in lose").
But this assumes that everyone pronounces sounds the same - and your
"FORhead / FARhead" example shows that this isn't always the case. It uses
three different symbols to distinguish between the vowels in "fur", "fir"
and "fer" (as in "fertile"), but I tend to make very little distinction
between those, whereas other people evidently do, given that the dictionary
make the distinction.


and "waistcoat" ("wayst-coat" or "WESSkit" (again, the
latter has almost died out

Regardless of pronunciation, the word itself has almost died out (at
least in the US). I can't remember the last time I used or heard it,
but if I had to say it, I would say WESS-kit. Most Americans say VEST.

I'm young enough (54) that I pronounce both words as spelled: FORhead and
WAISTcoat, probably because my parents do as well and it's what I have heard
all my life.

I'm also reminded of the obsolete spelling of the past-participle of the
verb "show", as typified by the notice "All tickets must be shewn" on old
buses. My dad remembers thinking that this was an absurd spelling of
"shown", even when he was growing up in the 1940s.

Likewise the city of Bristol used to be spelled Bristowe many centuries
ago,
but the Bristol dialect tends to add an L sound to the end of words which
end in a vowel sound, so "window" becomes "windowl", "area" becomes
"areal"
and "banana" becomes "bananal". Eventually the spelling of the city name
was
modified to reflect how the locals pronounced it!


Thanks very much! That's new to me, but I always like to know little
things like that.

I was at university in Bristol and the caretaker (janitor) of my hall of
residence had a very strong, almost impenetrable "Brissle" (*) accent. That
was where I first heard the Bristol L. I'd hoped to post a recording made by
the local radio station of interviews with Bristol residents, illustrating
the sound. But the page I was going to link to seems to have been deleted.
Grrr.

There are other regional peculiarities: the working-class London and
"Estuary English" (ie either side of the Thames estuary downstream of
London) does the opposite thing by suppressing the L sound, so milk is
pronounced "miwk", with a W sound replacing the L sound. Think of Bob
Hoskins in films such as The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa and Made in
Dagenham.

I've just remembered another UK/US difference: the stress on the word
"laboratory". UK puts it on the second and fourth "laBORaTRY", whereas most
American speakers put the stress on the first syllable "LABraTRY" or
"LABraTORy". When I was very young and heard references to the word in US
films etc on TV, I wondered why American scientists did all their work in
the toilet (because it sounds suspiciously like "lavatory" - aka bathroom,
restroom, john) :-)


(*) A nickname that arose from a humorous book called "Krek Waiters Peak
Brissle" which is filled with absurd phonetic renditions of common phrases,
poking fun at the accent. The title translates as "Correct Way To Speak
Bristol" :-)